Typically, an elevator car travels along a pair of opposing guide rails located in a shaft or hoistway of a building structure. It is customary to employ four roller guides per elevator car to guide the elevator car along the guide rails as the car is moved in a shaft or hoist way. Two of the rollers guides are secured to the upper portion of the elevator car in such a manner as to engage the corresponding guide rails. The remaining two roller guides are secured to the lower portion of the elevator car in a similar manner to engage the corresponding guide rails. Typically, roller guides have a plurality of rollers that engage and travel along the corresponding guide rail. Typically, each roller guide includes three or six rollers. The present invention is not limited to elevator roller guides having a particular number of rollers. Rather, the present invention can be used with elevator roller guides having differing numbers of rollers. Roller guides typically include a base having a fixed pattern of openings through which bolts extend to mount or connect the roller guides to the frame of an elevator car. The pattern of openings in the base of different roller guides typically differ, i.e., no standard exists for the pattern of openings in the base of the differing types of roller guides.
Over time or with advancement in roller guides it becomes necessary to replace the existing roller guides mounted or connected to an elevator car. This replacement process typically requires a roller guide installer to measure the existing hole pattern of the frame of the elevator car whose roller guides are to be replaced. If it is determined that the existing hole pattern of the frame of the elevator car whose roller guides are to be replaced differs from the hole pattern of the replacement roller guides, then the installer must fabricate an adaptor plate that will compensate for the two differing hole patterns. The above process of measuring and comparing the existing hole pattern of the frame of the elevator car to the hole pattern of the replacement roller guide and then fabricating an adaptor plate specific to the replacement roller guide is extremely time consuming.
In an effort to overcome the aforementioned time consuming process, U.S. Pat. No. 8,251,186 discloses an adapter kit for mounting roller guides to the frame of an elevator car. However, this adapter kit has significant drawbacks including but not limited to the following: (i) the fixed orientation between the u-shaped lower bracket and the n-shaped upper bracket caused at least in part by abutment of the mating lips or flanges of the u-shaped lower brackets and the n-shaped upper bracket; (ii) the fixed parallel orientation of the two u-shaped lower brackets again caused at least in part by abutment of the mating lips or flanges of the u-shaped lower support and the n-shaped upper support; (iii) the differing orientation of the bolts used to connect the roller guide and adaptor kit to the frame of an elevator car (i.e., bolts used to connect the roller guide to the n-shaped bracket and the bolts used to connect the u-shaped brackets to frame of elevator car are oriented vertically while the bolts used to connect the u-shaped brackets to the n-shaped bracket are oriented horizontally); (iv) the time consuming process of mounting the adapter kit and corresponding roller guide to an elevator car frame which includes at least the following steps: (a) loosely securing the u-shaped brackets to the frame of the elevator car; (b) temporarily mounting the n-shaped bracket and the roller guide on the loosely secured u-shaped brackets for alignment purposes; (c) removing the n-shaped bracket and roller guide from the loosely secured u-shaped brackets; (d) tightening the u-shaped brackets to the frame of the elevator car; (e) remounting the n-shaped bracket and the roller guide on the u-shaped brackets; and (f) connecting the n-shaped bracket to the u-shaped brackets; and, (v) the inability of the adapter kit to dampen vibrations transmitted to the elevator car.